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S.P. Chan

Why I’m not having kids

My mom was a senior manager at a global stem-cell bank when she retired. While my brother and I were growing up, she worked part-time. I’ve heard her say more than once: “If I had just had another 16 years, I could have gone so high.”

Am I being selfish if I don’t have children?

I’m selfish for not committing to my hypothetical child’s well-being. But I will have a lot more attention and money to shower on real-life nieces, nephews, mentees and philanthropic causes.

Also, not having a child is the most important thing I could do to reduce my carbon footprint, according to a 2009 study by Oregon State University statisticians. (Of course, like all parents, I believe my theoretical child would have grown up to become a brilliant physicist and saved the world from global warming, so this is a moot point.)

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Two things: Nearly everyone I’ve known who was trying to convince me that they didn’t want kids was really trying to convince themselves. People who really don’t want kids just don’t have them.

And second, this attitude is obviously more common on the left. But why is it that members of the left that support policies that depend on the next generation to pay for seem so unwilling to help create the next generation? Medicare, Social Security…and now the basic design of Obamacare is to force young people who don’t really need health insurance to get it anyway to help pay for older people who do. As far as I’m concerned, if you support these programs, it’s your duty to submit to the cost and struggle of raising children to help pay for them. But since I don’t want lefties to breed and have no interest in keeping these programs sustainable, I tend not to make much of an issue of it.

I remember reading the Daily Mail, where this childless 27-year-old had to fight to get her tubes tied, because she knew exactly how her life was going to be in her 20’s by golly.

One responder to the article said something along the lines of, “Be seeing you soon. I am the finance person at a fertility clinic. We see women like you change your minds or re-marry to someone who *does* want kids, and now need to have IVF because of the tubal ligation you got in your twenties.”

And if her mother had risen higher at work, how would she be remembered today (assuming that she is not still with us). Most of us face a similar fate. We will never have a chance to leave an imprint larger than we will have on our own children, for good or bad. No one will remember me for how much I made, but my children will know that I loved them enough to bring them into the world and raise them to be responsible adults. Compared to the opportunity to have higher work status, or a byline in a big newspaper or a national news syndicate, I know which one I’d choose.

How sad these people are. Neither of my two children were planned and when we found out, both times I was overwhelmed with the stress of having taking care of another human being in such a capacity. But I have no regrets. My children are the best thing to have ever happened to me. I love them both dearly. Carbon foot print be damned. We own this planet.

This is the responsible decision for her. After all, having children means responsibility for raising them. Which is expensive. She works for a newspaper, which is the fastest dying industry in America. Odds are her highly paid job of writing drivel any 8th grader (not in government school) could write likely wont survive to see any child of hers off to Kindergarten.

I’m blessed with a wonderful daughter, and couldn’t begin to imagine my life without her. The writer will certainly be missing out on something far more fulfilling than being successful in her professional career – but that’s certainly her choice.

Where to start? I was this person when I was 30. Happily married, no interest in being a parent, ambitious in my career. Always finding reasons to wait to have kids. And when I finally did get pregnant after 9 years of marriage at age 35, quite by accident, I had a horrible beginning with severe nausea and two hospitalizations. The troubled pregnancy ended up costing me my job when I was just 2 months away from delivery and was closing on my first house. I ended up unemployed for a year and pretty broke.

I could have just thrown in the towel and said, boy, it sure looks like I am just not meant for motherhood and it’s ruining my life.

Thank God I didn’t do that. Although my career was certainly shifted to a lower gear because I went through with that child and then had another (cost me another job, too) I have never, ever regretted it. My biggest regret now is that I waited so long to have kids and didn’t have more at a younger age.

I have drilled both of my kids that they should marry young and have a lot of kids. They don’t have to “give up” anything and they will “get” more than anything they might give up anyway.